DRAWER IN A DRAWER

KIRKUS REVIEW

A fascinating solo debut from the illustrator of Alvin Schwartz's Gold & Silver, Silver & Gold (1988). Pungent, concise verse--sparkling with puns and double-entendres--captions a visual adventure as imaginative as Wiesner's Free Fall (1988, Caldecott Honor). Fud Butter, the ""drawer [artist] in a drawer"" (of a chest in his misty, gray--toned room, which suggests the ground on which an artist might work), hauls a ropelike line from a giant pencil (""towed a line""), and with it he builds a box that goes on a delightfully imaginative journey during which it captures the moon, among other things. The art here, skillfully designed and beautifully executed, is full of sly wit, making grand sense of the nonsense verse. Some wondrously conceived passages are repeated with nifty visual variations: the luminous moon, a translucent curtain, the artist in grisaille (leaving his work to glow with color), the box formed by a lively line that looks as if it came straight from a tube of paint. Some of the references here may escape a young audience, but no matter: there's plenty to intrigue and amuse readers of any age, and for many rereadings.

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